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The 21st century economy requires 21st century skills which include software development and high-end digital knowledge. The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates the US economy will need as many as 100,000 new information technology workers per year over the next decade. Right now, only about 60,000 of these workers enter the workforce each year (see US economy faces impending skills gap).

Clearly, traditional four year colleges are not keeping up with demand and the college route is not a practical path for everyone. The good news is that coding academies and boot camps are providing an alternative path generating software developers, product managers, and designers in as little as twelve weeks.

This week, a delegation of South African government officials and business leaders visited Silicon Valley. The delegation was led by Honorable Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams, the Deputy Minister of Telecommunications and Postal Services. On the delegation's agenda was learning which ideas working…

Perhaps the most underutilized assets in most companies are the ideas in their employees’ heads.

It makes sense that the people spending most of their day working on products or with customers are bombarded with insights on new and better ways to serve those customers. But in too many companies, employees are not empowered to do anything with their ideas. Instead, decisions on what ideas to explore are made by senior leaders. But these senior leaders don’t have the same proximity to insights because they spend most of their working day meeting with other senior leaders. We call this the Insight-Decision Divide.

Bridging the Insight-Decision Divide requires companies to develop a culture of innovation where every employee is empowered to work on their own ideas. Foundational to empowering employees is giving them time to innovate. If employees’ time is fully subscribed to their day jobs, they won’t have time to explore their …

Congratulations! You’ve just been placed at the helm of the company. Your years of hard work and accomplishments have been rewarded with this awesome new responsibility. Enjoy the moment but don’t spend too much time celebrating. There is much work to do and expectations are high. Your employees and shareholders are expecting you to drive growth and are looking to you for immediate answers.

So what’s your next move? For inspiration, you might be looking at Steve Jobs’ triumphant return to Apple in 1997. At the time, it would be putting it nicely to say Apple was in the doldrums. The company was operating at a loss. Microsoft Windows was dominant. And to add insult to injury, Michael Dell when asked what he would do if he was running Apple said “I'd shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders”.

But that’s not what Jobs did. He started a period of spectacular growth by introducing a stream of innovative new products. It starte…